I am now fully addicted to Factorio, thanks to you all.
Turns out I had tried it a while ago. Something didn’t stick back then and I think it was because I tried to play the campaign. Free Play is so much better.
I think of Factorio as a city builder where you build a city of productive robots instead of humans. It’s all logistics and no population management, which I think disqualifies it as a colony manager.
Personally, I love these:
- Factorio. Discussed to death, but I love it for how there’s always “one more thing” to do. Strike out for new resources, figure out how to automate building science packs, or just optimize one little thing.
- Cities Skylines. Common criticism is that it’s a traffic management game with a city builder layer on top. I like that about it, though. The city management is never difficult, but as cities get bigger and bigger, layout matters more, and optimizing that is a fun challenge.
- Gnomoria. I think this is the best (at the moment) distillation of Dwarf Fortress, made accessible for those who hate the ASCII graphics. RimWorld has better emergent storytelling, but sometimes I want boring predictability over exciting randomness.
Aven Colony and one of the Anno games are on my short list to try out soon.
Let me help you with that: The one you want is Anno 1404, AKA Dawn of Discovery.
I totally share your assessment of Gnomoria, BTW. I know how it fails to approximate DF’s insane story engine, but it has a UI that works, and plenty of overlapping systems to give you some unexpected moments.
Reallly. That’s how I’ve tried the demo since I assumed it had the tutorial…
So, yes, the first 3 missions in the “campaign” are the tutorial. Afterwards you can launch into the campaign proper, which does pick up from where the tutorial left off, or go to a different game type. The real campaign had me lost and confused. It had a destroyed factory area and I had no idea where to start and what to fix. Some things I couldn’t even tell what it was before. It really annoyed me. So I tried Free Play and then it clicked. Starting from ground zero and building up my own area, updating technologies, developing a train system. Yes, that’s the game I love.
Alright, I’ll see if the demo can let me just try an open game…or is this the full game I need in order to do this…?
Does Farm Manager belong in this thread? Colonies and Cities all depend on food I suppose.
Anyhow this game is out on Steam, I may give it a go.
Do SimTower and Project Highrise count for this genre?
I came in here expecting to see some great games in a genre I love a lot and all i see is EA titles. Doesn’t anyone finish games anymore? Pretty much everything else… I’ve played. I don’t consider the RTS titles city builders even though I liked Age of Empires…except III.
Why are so many of these games STILL IN EARLY ACCESS??? Gah, so annoying.
-Tom
Well, @Nesrie and @tomchick I agree, but good news! There is one game coming out on 4/24: Frostpunk that didn’t even go the EA route. They did this crazy thing where they made the game first, then will release and sell it. It’s made by 11 bit studios, who also did This War of Mine. I’m sure you both have it on your radar, but just in case someone out there didn’t, it’s one CBCM releasing soon to consider.
Oh, nice. 11bit have always struck me as talented developers.
City builders & DF-likes sure do seem to be a popular genre for kickstarting (Maia, Stonehearth, Kingdoms & Castles, etc.) and Early Access. I don’t know if that’s the myth of Toady One at play, or just that it’s a nichey genre without a lot of publisher support.
For anyone wanting some old-school base builder fun:
Someone is also doing a rewrite of Gnomoria (called Ignomia), for those interested. Don’t think this one has anything playable yet though.
Would you recommend Widelands, Daagar? What’s it do well?
I’m not sure why anyone needs to rewrite (I take that to mean “recode”) Gnomoria. What’s the impetus?
Pfft, I don’t actually play everything I find. I just find! Then wait for other QT3’ers to tell me if it was worth it or not…
I do have that on my radar, but I am not sure the thematic part is that appealing to me. It seems, well, depressing. I mean I like a challenge, so games being hard isn’t the issue its’ just… we’ll well see I guess.
is this a “just because”, or did Gnormia get abandoned? I admit I haven’t touched it since, I dunno, 2014, 2015? But I played the crap out of it. I started quite some time before it was available on Steam, and my Steam-only playtime is apparently 138 hours…
Yes, it was abandoned quite a while ago. I believe the author just got busy with life. “Rewrite” was maybe a bad choice of words - this is an independent project.